I have read that the phrase “it is what it is” is the most degrading sequence of five words in the English language.
Degrading — wow!
I use it a lot. For 290 days, I’ve cycled between “it is what it is” and rage.
Since October 7 there’s been one aftershock after another and another and yet one more, and just when you achieve some equilibrium —
Another.
The debate. The assassination attempt. The coverup. Biden dropping out by letter and tweet, not to be seen since. The coverup of the coverup. What next?
How is Biden going to last another six months—are they making behind-the-scenes preparations to invoke the 25th Amendment? Someone on X told me they’d have to install another VP, which would have to be approved by the Congress, but that could take months. It’s happened before. It all depends on how sick Biden really is and whether and how both parties think their candidate benefits. The country? We don’t matter.
I say be prepared for anything. I personally expect that Biden will become truly incapacitado and that the Pelosicrats are haggling right now with Johnson about sharing congressional duties during a Harris interregnum. But what do I know?
I’m in an alternate reality in which I process things very slowly and incompletely. I spend a lot of time thinking, and my thoughts trail off into nothingness. And I end up saying to myself, “it is what it is.”
I do want to say one thing.
Underestimating your enemy is THE signal failure in war and I think a lot of pro-Trumpers are doing just that.
It comes from arrogance, the most detestable human quality.
I suggest you re-read John Stuart Mill’s famous quotation:
“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”
I’m too tapped out now but in a day or two I’ll make the case for Kamala Harris and why the Trump campaign should respect her.
With any luck she won’t follow my advice.
For now, remember what Clark Gable as Rhett Butler said about arrogance: